George Clooney, Georgia May Jagger, Olivia Wilde, and Other Stars on Their Chic, or Messy, Closets

Queen Latifah

On her way into a New York City Ballet gala, Queen Latifah described a decidedly regal, though eclectic, arrangement. “My closet looks like a museum,” she said. “Certain pieces I keep for nostalgia: Oscar dresses, Golden Globes gowns, my outfit from the Mermaid Parade in Brooklyn, sports items with my name on them. It's a bit of a menagerie.”

Photo: Nicholas Hunt/PatrickMcMullan.com

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George Clooney

As he walked the red carpet at the premiere of Gravity, George Clooney offered a practical tip. “All cedar,” he suggested. “So you don’t get moths.”

Photo: Harel Rintzler/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Daphne Guinness

At Sotheby’s “Take Home a Nude” auction, style icon Daphne Guinness, who likely has one of the more extensive wardrobes on the planet, noted that her best closet is the one she just completed. “I’m getting pretty good at making closets,” Guinness said. “And I can do them really, really well for not very much [money]. But how they are organized, that would be a whole interview. They’re curated like a museum.”

Guinness is pictured here at a launch party for a Karl Lagerfeld collection at Selfridges.

Photo: Tim Jenkins

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Karl Lagerfeld

While cohosting a salute to actress Tilda Swinton at the Museum of Modern Art, designer Karl Lagerfeld indicated that he wasn’t fond of the word closet. “I have no closets; I have a dressing room,” he clarified. “Because in closets, you see nothing. I have far too many clothes for that.”

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Lady Amanda Harlech

Lagerfeld muse Lady Amanda Harlech also preferred a different term. “Boudoir,” she corrected. “It’s a whole room in my home. It is full of the most incredible clothes, of course. But it has a little feeling of Blanche DuBois. The room has a floor painted with Japanese pottery motifs and gold leaf and a four-poster bed with all the clothes hanging on it.”

Photo: Jimi Celeste/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Hugh Jackman and Deborra-Lee Furness

During a New Yorkers for Children benefit, Hugh Jackman’s wife, Deborra-Lee Furness, supplied one adjective to describe his closets. “Messy.” “No, they’re not,” Jackman argued. “They’re pretty clean right now.”

“Color-coordinated,” said Furness.

“Yeah, but probably overstuffed,” he noted. “I’m totally spoiled. They keep giving us too many clothes.”

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Helena Bonham Carter

The Inquisitive Guest cornered Helena Bonham Carter during the Hamptons International Film Festival to ask about the madness of her boudoir. “My closet is terrible,” she said. “Because it has crept like a disease. It's, like, across the hall, into another room. You can't even see the cupboard because it's covered in clothes.”

Bonham Carter is pictured here at the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards.

Photo: David Crotty/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Olivia Wilde

When AD ventured to the Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for the premiere of the indie film Drinking Buddies, Olivia Wilde, one of the stars, discussed her surprisingly normal closets. “Small and pretty evenly separated between male and female clothing,” claimed Wilde. “Whereas my fiancé [actor Jason Sudeikis] has a sneaker closet with a hundred-plus pairs of shoes, I have a sort of sad, dark pile of shoes. You’d be shocked.”

Photo: Paul Bruinooge/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Karolina Kurkova

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art during the 2013 Costume Institute Gala, supermodel Karolina Kurkova told AD she has been downsizing. “When I was younger, I would buy a lot more clothes,” she said. “Now, I'm smarter about what I buy. It's easier to see what you have when you have less. I'm very specific about how to put away the tank tops, the short sleeves, the V-necks, the whites. I have everything labeled.”

Photo: Nicholas Hunt/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Jessica Paré

“It’s very ordered until you get right down to the bottom, which is a jumble of bags and shoes and boots and dirty laundry,” answered actress Jessica Paré, who was escorted by Jason Wu to the Met Gala. “I’m an obsessive purger. I will watch a Hoarders marathon and then throw everything that I own into donation bags.”

Photo: Nicholas Hunt/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Ashley Greene

At the Met Gala, actress Ashley Greene described a stellar new arrangement. “It's amazing—a walk-in closet with a little bench island in the middle. It has a lot of drawers and a lot of clothes.”

Photo: Nicholas Hunt/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Karen Elson

While supermodel Karen Elson was unveiling the Tiffany & Co. Atlas Collection at the jeweler’s behemoth New York flagship, she told AD about her closet in Nashville. “The look is functional,” she said. “I am very, very untidy, and I have a lot of clothes, so it has to be super-organized. The best thing I ever got to save space was a lever to lower the clothes on the [higher] row. It’s very user-friendly.”

Elson is pictured here at the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Awards.

Photo: Jimi Celeste/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Paris Hilton

In the front row at a Michael Kors fashion show, AD caught up with Paris Hilton, whose endless closets were featured in Sofia Coppola’s 2013 film The Bling Ring. “Every time I buy a house, I always turn an entire bedroom into the most fabulous closet,” Hilton said. “I was always obsessed with the movie Clueless and [Cher’s] amazing closet. So I wanted to do something even more over-the-top.”

Hilton is pictured here at the opening of an exhibition.

Photo: Andreas Branch/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Alicia Keys

Wearing a black bustier at a Jason Wu show, singer Alicia Keys said that her closet has recently become her new favorite room. “We just moved,” Keys told AD. “And I love that we still have the chance to make [the closet] what we want it to be. As of right now, it’s a little bit like a store, but it’s not going to remain like that.”

Photo: Clint Spaulding/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Kerry Washington

In the front row at an Alexander Wang show, the peripatetic actress Kerry Washington was seated beside her stylist, Erin Walsh. “My closet is always changing depending on where I am located,” Washington said. “I do a spring cleaning once a year to get rid of clutter. Actually, that’s how we met. Erin was helping me do my closet, and I wouldn’t let her go.”

Photo: Clint Spaulding/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Courtney Love

A moment before Wang’s show, singer Courtney Love told us she has two closets. “There is my ‘lady’ closet and my ‘rock kook’ closet. They are both big. And, by the way, the Kardashians did my closets in 2007. Back then, they had a closet design company.”

Love is pictured here at a gala.

Photo: Harel Rintzler/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Helena Christensen

After an Edun show, Helena Christensen described her closet. “Oh, God, not anything fit for AD,” she said. “It’s a bit of a mess, but there is a certain system to it. Most of it is shelves, then I have a little glass house built out of barn windows with metal bars where the clothes hang and you can see into it from three sides.”

Christensen is pictured here at a film premiere.

Photo: JG/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Amber Riley

Glee star Amber Riley, wearing Tadashi Shoji in the front row at his show, told AD she had designed her own closet. “I made sure that I had a lot of longer spaces for my longer gowns,” she said. “And then I made sure that I had cubbies for my Jordans because I love my sneakers.”

Riley is pictured here at a VH1 music event.

Photo: Brian Lindensmith/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Christina Ricci

“I had an amazing closet when I lived in Los Angeles,” noted Christina Ricci at a KaufmanFranco show. “I turned a room that was supposed to be a library into a shoe bank and clothing room. And now in New York, I’m in a tiny apartment with no closets. My closets are basically two storage cages downstairs that I’ve turned into walk-in closets with a sheet in front of them.”

Ricci is pictured here at a Fashion Week event.

Photo: Clint Spaulding/ PatrickMcMullan.com

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Jane Krakowski

“Mine needs to be sorted,” offered Jane Krakowski, also at the KaufmanFranco show. “It’s like a designer episode of Hoarders.”

Krakowski is pictured here at a SAG Awards event.

Photo: David Crotty/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Tommy Hilfiger

Backstage at a Tommy Hilfiger show, the Inquisitive Guest asked the designer about the closets in his dreamlike apartment atop the Plaza Hotel. “It is basically my own personal boutique. Everything is in order. I have a shirt department, the pants department, the accessories department. . . . ”

Photo: Nicholas Hunt/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Rachel Zoe

In the front row at the Hilfiger show, designer and stylist Rachel Zoe suggested an adjective one might have expected when describing her closets: cluttered. “I have a lot of closets,” she continued. “I had a cedar closet in my garage. And then I have a closet for long dresses and a closet for everyday wear and a coat closet—quite a lot of closets.”

Zoe is pictured here at a Fashion Week party.

Photo: Eugene Mim/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Georgia May Jagger

At the opening of the Sunglass Hut in Times Square, model Georgia May Jagger informed AD that her closet was under construction. “It is currently being designed. I just bought a house in London,” she said. “I’m thinking of a lacquered look, probably amethyst-purple. I’m going quite wild in my closet. I’ll probably have leopard-print carpet.”

Jagger is pictured here at a benefit gala.

Photo: Sylvain Gaboury/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Ali Larter

Hosting a Perrier-Jouët fête atop New York’s Americano Hotel, actress Ali Larter discussed her walk-in closet. “It’s amazing,” she said. “You can sit down and have a glass of Champagne in there. It has the feeling of a Tom Ford store—with a very dark chocolate-brown rug, lots of wood, and a gold chandelier.”

Larter is pictured here at a Fashion Week event.

Photo: Jimi Celeste/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Jessica Alba

During a Target launch event, actress Jessica Alba described her meticulous closet. “I have lots of plastic bins and labels everywhere for my bags,” she said. “And fabric bins and wooden crates for my scarves. I’m very organized. Aren’t most people?”

Photo: Sylvain Gaboury/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Jean “Johnny” Pigozzi

While at the Barneys New York launch of LimoLand swimwear at inveterate collector and LimoLand founder Jean “Johnny” Pigozzi’s Manhattan apartment—designed by Ettore Sottsass in the late 1980s—the Inquisitive Guest was invited upstairs. The doors of Pigozzi’s closet were covered with a billboard-size black-and-white image of his father, Henri, with fellow industrialists Gianni Agnelli and Henry Ford seated in an open Fiat. “Sottsass found the photo in an old newspaper from 1956,” he said.